Presently, abrasive articles can be used for wet grinding applications, such as automotive painted surfaces. In these applications, the paper backing material is treated to render the material water resistant. Such treatments include impregnation of the backing material with latex saturants, or backsizing the material with a water resistant coating. After the paper backing is saturated, several additional treatment steps are then employed to give the backing proper handling properties, resulting in a high production cost.
A disadvantage of present technology is the current paper backing material has an inherently rough surface. The roughness of the paper backing material can be greater than the particle size of a fine grade abrasive grain and can result in not all of the abrasive grains being in a single plane, therefore not allowing all of the abrasive grains to contact the workpiece during use. Therefore, with such a surface, it is difficult to produce a fine grade abrasive article having a thin, uniform mineral profile.
The cationic cure of epoxy resins as abrasive binders has been described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,997,717 and requires a thermal cure at 50 to 200.degree. C. for one to ten minutes after initial irradiation with actinic light. This process requires an ionic salt of an organometallic complex cation as a photoinitiator.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,985,340 describes a polymeric precursor that can be employed as a binder for abrasive articles. The polymeric precursor is selected from the group consisting of (1) at least one ethylenically unsaturated monomer, optionally, in combination with a vinyl ether monomer and a curing agent comprising an organometallic salt and an onium salt.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,101 discloses energy polymerizable systems comprising a cationically polymerizable material and a catalytically effective amount of an ionic salt of an organometallic complex cation as polymerization initiator.